the fact, at least he says there is more good than evil in the world.
At last he even turns evil into good, or what ought to be the effects
of one, into what ought to be the effects of the other, as he says pain
is necessary for happiness. But if pain is, as he says, in this world
necessary for happiness, why will it not still be necessary hereafter?
He answers, because by that time we shall have experienced pain enough
for a future supply of happiness. If it is objected, why have we not
had pain enough by the time each of us are twenty or thirty years of
age, instead of waiting 'till our deaths at so many different ages? He
can only finish his argument by allowing that the ways of God are
inscrutable to man, that every thing is for the best and refer us to
_Candide_ for the rest of his philosophy; nor will he ever resolve the
question, "if evil and pain are good and necessary now, why will they
not always be so? Take a view of human existence, and who can even
allow, that there is more happiness than misery in the world? Dr.
Priestley thinks to give the turn of the scale to happiness, by making
it depend intirely upon health, notwithstanding he says in another
place that human sensations are a mass collected from the past, present
and future, and as a man grows up the present goes on to bear a less
proportion to the other two. It would indeed be a short but lame way of
proving that "happiness is the design of the creation" because health
is designed, and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule."
Many a healthy man has certainly been unhappy, or else had a man better
study health than virtue. If the mill-wright make a poor machine he is
a poor workman; God in like manner designing health and introducing
sickness is but a poor physician. In another place Dr. Priestley having
considered, that he had asserted that human sensations arise from ideas
of the past and future as well as the present, finds himself obliged to
alter his notions of happiness, so far as to say that happiness is more
intellectual than corporeal. But it is rather extraordinary to assert